


Self-Diagnoses for the Consistently Disengaged

by sexonastick



Category: UnREAL (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-21
Updated: 2015-10-21
Packaged: 2018-04-27 11:41:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5047162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sexonastick/pseuds/sexonastick
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Rachel was younger, she used to joke that "CBT" stood for "consistently broken teenager." (Her mom didn't think it was funny.)</p><p>Now she mostly doesn't talk about it. Consider her job a form of prolonged exposure therapy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Self-Diagnoses for the Consistently Disengaged

**Author's Note:**

> Mild warning for discussion of misdiagnosed mental illness.

Rachel's used to there being stories about her on set. 

Not just her. 

That's just how it works, you know, first day on a new job and a part of the initiation is shooting the shit about the people you've known and the dumb shit you've done. 

Only the good stuff at first. You never know how fast someone might get kicked off Chet's set -- he actually thinks that, he actually says it's _his_ set -- and you don't want them leaving with loaded ammunition. 

Because everything can be a weapon if you use it right. 

So it's just the harmless stuff at first.

Like that time Jay had to work extra hard to convince one of his girls to quit talking about how the horse drawing their romantic carriage ride wouldn't stop crapping. (She got cut later anyway, so they ended up using it as a foreboding visual metaphor.)

How Mike the grip can't handle his coffee black (six sugars, _six_ ) and the time that new sound guy, Bobby-something, got chewed out by Quinn for whistling Justin Bieber songs while he mic'd contestants up. It got completely stuck in one of the girl's heads -- take away their phones, TV, internet, and they become little empty vessels for literally everything, god bless them -- and she couldn't stop singing to herself for about three hours.

Seriously.

*

There are all the stories about Chet. The first thing everyone wants to know is how rich is he _really_ , but you don't talk about money in the business.

Correction: you don't talk about other people's money if you're going to look them in the face later that day. 

Otherwise, all you talk about is money, just in a different language. 

So no one says "how much," but it's what they really mean when they ask if he has a swimming pool. 

"How many bathrooms?" they say.

Rachel has to laugh, because that's what people expect. If she looked as annoyed as she actually felt about him living in a mansion with her broke ass barely able to make rent, that might make things uncomfortable. "You know," she says; "I've never stayed over for a slumber party, or I'd let you know."

They all know Chet makes enough to show up in a different car every couple months, which is also about how often he bothers to put on pants that have actual pockets.

Kind of like how everyone knows he's been boning Quinn since probably day one, but nobody talks about it. Not outside of drunken mistakes where people get too honest, or hushed whispers from new people who don't know yet that you don't mention Quinn's sex life around Rachel Goldberg -- hell, you don't talk about _any_ woman's sex life around Rachel (unless they're a contestant and it'd make for good TV) -- but otherwise everyone keeps quiet. 

People get it without having to ask and nobody needs the specifics exactly.

Some people do booze. Chet definitely does cocaine. 

Quinn does Chet. 

Everybody's got their mistakes, you know?

*

Rachel is in no position to judge anyone.

For anything.

*

There are the other stories too. The myth-making.

The second camera AC who hid fake roaches in Carl's box of herbal tea. The time Jeremy shimmied up onto the roof to get the shot -- just a scenic, but he really wanted a better angle on the sunset.

The lawyers probably wouldn't have considered it worth the risk. Quinn really chewed him out on the walkie. 

"You're an idiot," Rachel told him, punching his shoulder hard as he ducked away, shielding the camera more than himself. 

"Careful," he laughed. "Careful, wait until I've got the rig off." 

"Quinn is going to wear your balls as a necklace." 

People still talk about it sometimes, how Jeremy would do anything to get the shot. How he cares more about the look than anyone can be expected to working on a show like this. Out of these kind of stories, even crazier ideas have spawned. Little things.

Like people are convinced that he checks the light rigs himself every night, even though he's not the department head. Someone once insisted he saw Jeremy bring in a ARRI kit from home. 

That, by the way, is insane. No one keeps ARRI kits in their home. Maybe it was a C-stand and they got confused somehow. Or gels. He could have totally brought in gels.

One time Chet decided an entire episode needed to be shot with a rosy tint. Not even added in post like a sensible person; that takes too much time, he said, and time is money. Even though that's not remotely accurate, but hey it's not like he hasn't been in an editing bay himself in almost six years, so who's really surprised.

Every camera op ran around with a gradient over the lens, all at different variances as you cut between angles. Chet declared it revolutionary, unlike anything else happening in reality TV.

Which was true, but there's a reason for that.

They only went through one setup like that before Chet got distracted by something else and Quinn pulled the plug on the color filters and reshot the entire moment again. By the time the episode was being put together for air, she must have won Chet over to sanity, because it never went to broadcast with its full fifty shades of red.

Gels are for light kits, after all. Romantic mood lighting. 

Not for making people look like they are turning radioactive with rage.

*

Don't expect anyone who's not a field producer to understand the cameras, though, and only people who sit in the bay really get how post works. It's just the way things go, like a theorem about the universe. Some people shoot, some cut, and some produce.

And the quickest way to get a new employee to like you is to talk shit about the other side.

Any time Rachel sits down with someone new at the Avid, she has a couple spare jokes in her pocket about the dumb requests that come from network. Bullshit stories about how people almost tried to get them to use star-wipes, just to get the new girl to crack a smile.

"It's like they've never even heard of a scratch track," Rachel says with just the right amount of feigned outrage. 

Not that they use scratch tracks here. It's always too close to air. Even for voice over, they've got Graham around on a short leash. Plus he says the same somber shit every third episode, so they've got an entire catalogue of his bullshit on reserve any time they need to pull up a sound byte about shocking revelations and romance gone astray.

It's all so predictable, but that's the way audiences like it. Wrapped up neat in tidy boxes, the way real life never is.

* 

Quinn never sticks her head inside the editing bay herself anymore, but she always seems to know when Rachel has been busy.

"Are you keeping tabs on me, or what?" Rachel smirks as she hands over the hard drive. She just likes to make it clear that, while Quinn might be her boss, they're definitely on even footing when it comes to being overly defensive and prickly. "I guess I could call. Text you if I'm going to be staying out past curfew…"

"You're funny."

Quinn downs her vodka, but she does crack a smile.

Rachel's always been good at playing to the room. She knows which people to push with and which need a softer touch. 

And she knows how much Quinn respects that sometimes deadened and angry look Rachel gets in her eyes. That this office is one of the only places she can let herself look and feel this way so openly.

It's not her fault if she's the only one Quinn takes this kind of shit from.

There are a lot of people that let Rachel get away with shit.

*

Her mom would say that's something else. The psychosis. Empathy as weapon. An uncanny ability to read people and then feed them so much of what they say they want that they almost start to choke.

(Home was the only room she never knew how to play. The only place she didn't feel like coming out on top.)

But what matters is what people see, right? The end result. 

Change it in the edit if you don't like how it plays.

*

There are the stories about Rachel herself.

Which one you hear first depends on the person telling it and whether or not they actually like her. Because there's that time she got a woman to open up about her brother going to jail. Not a big deal on the surface, except it turns out the guy is in there for what really appear to be mental health issues that resulted in him assaulting a local business owner.

So good luck on him getting out again any time soon.

Not that any of that made the cut. In what went to air, he's a deranged and dangerous criminal who left our girl a mess.

"Does it worry you?" Rachel had asked just off camera.

The girl's mascara was starting to run. They tend to make sure they don't have the waterproof stuff on set. It kind of ruins the look they're going for. "… what?"

"I mean, because this kind of thing is often hereditary," Rachel quotes from one of many times from her fucked up childhood where her mom made her feel about two inches tall. She knows how to pull someone's guts out and shove them back in again. Criss-crossed stitches all the way up their side. Visible damage. "Does that ever worry you?"

She also knows how to survive.

*

Which, it's fine.

The guy isn't getting out, so he won't see the show, he doesn't really know, but Rachel still felt a pang of guilt over seeing the ratings spike at the precise moment his sister broke down, sniffling to herself that she's not crazy.

She's not broken.

*

Did you know that "crazy" sells ad dollars? It's weirdly huge.

You wouldn't expect almost any product to want to be associated with perceived instability, but there you go. Marketing's an even weirder place than the rest of Hollywood.

* 

Some people think that moment is why they call her the dragon.

Breathing fire and scorching innocent villagers or whatever.

(It isn't.)

*

The other one, the nicer one -- the one that Quinn and Jeremy tend to tell first -- is the time that Rachel dumped her mic and dropped her pants before diving into the mansion swimming pool on the last week just to get one of the girls to drop her guard again.

By the end, none of the girls trust their producers. This isn't always a problem. By that point they're so close to unraveling, it would take a light breeze to send most girl's spiraling, and if they've made it that far then they probably have enough of a connection to the suitor to send him in for what you need. 

Julia was different.

This level of calm and composed doesn't usually make it to the final rounds. A lot of guys find them too boring -- and if they don't feel that way all on their own, Quinn can usually see to that herself. 

But Julia was also a babe in a C-cup, so that went some distance, but only so far. She was definitely getting cut this week. She knew it too. 

And she refused to give any decent bytes. Nothing. All she talked about during her interview with Rachel was the weather.

That was part of the inspiration. 

"God, yeah." Rachel dropped her jacket from her shoulders in a shrug. "It is getting pretty hot, right?"

"… um." Julia blinked at her. 

It was her first answer all day that hadn't sound rehearsed. 

That's when Rachel knew she'd already won.

*

She did laps in just her underwear and came back out soaking wet, literally dripping, and simply waved before gathering her clothes under her arm and turning back toward the mansion.

She had turned the tables.

Now it was Julia who wanted to talk to her. 

"What was that?" 

"A swim," Rachel says simply, as she walks briskly toward the back of the mansion. She knows which rooms don't have cameras up anymore -- behind locked doors. "What, it wasn't obvious?" 

She hasn't bothered to put her earpiece back in, but she can hear the crackle of it in her palm. 

Quinn is not pleased. 

"No, but--"

"Look, I'm kind of soaked through, so if you don't mind."

"You can't just ignore me!" Julia's almost on the verge of tears, stomping her foot once. "What about our interview?"

Rachel looks back over the girl's shoulder quickly to make sure it's all on camera before she says, "I just didn't think you wanted to talk about it. You know, because it's embarrassing."

Quinn has to be on top of this. She's got the instincts too, so Rachel knows to trust that Jay is flying in with the suitor, right as Rachel's girl is ready to lose her shit all over anyone within her radius. 

All on national television. 

Enter prince charming, stage right, just in time for Julia to round on him, all that composure gone out the window.

Along with the shoe that she tosses at his head.

* 

_"I'm not here for drama,"_ says at least one person a season on every reality show. Also, they're not here to make friends.

That same logic applies on set pretty much.

You can't care about the friendships. Be professional and watch everybody's back, sure, but these people are not your friends first. Everybody wants their girls to come out on top. Everybody wants to be the one in Chet's ear. Or Quinn's.

Not that most of them stand even the slightest chance with Quinn. 

Rachel's pretty sure that's why so many of them hate her. It's not exactly her fault that she and Quinn get along the way they do. 

Probably some kind of mentorship thing.

*

Rachel doesn't know when she became one of those people whose only close acquaintances are people where she works. She never wanted that to happen. She spends all day trying on different people, beliefs, and ideas, it's not like any of them see who she is.

But does that matter when they decided they like the person they think is there? Don't we all fake stuff sometimes.

It's not like it's uncommon in this business either. It's not just the inside jokes and shared stories that allow everyone to speak in short-hand; there's some kind of collective trauma that comes from watching lives implode from ten feet away. Like they all share something similar to what happens to people in war zones. 

Shellshocked. 

A lot of the crew seems to blame Quinn for all this pain, somehow, as if they're not all a part of it too. Everyone always blames the captain, right? But it shows a lack of perspective. The pain comes from the audience, some collective need that they're all working to serve. The human condition. The desire to objectify, commodify, and consume. 

If people weren't tuning in to see blood, they wouldn't have to collect the bodies. 

But sure, Quinn can kind of be a bitch sometimes.

*

Because she's not just aggressive toward the contestants, although Rachel hasn't been at the end of her wrath as much as lot of other people. She tries not to feel smug about that, but how can she not? Being the favorite is kind of nice.

Especially when she knows she's earned it. 

Rachel is the best. Year after year. That kind of talent doesn't always get recognized in the business. Nobody likes to share credit, but Quinn will. 

Not just with cash either. She tells the room: you. You did this.

Some people might want to squirm or feel shame, but that means you're not meant to be a producer, where there is no room left for shame. Not if you want to make an impact.

Sure, she could go join the Peace Corps or AmeriCorps closer to home. Try to help African AIDS babies and women suffering from genital mutilation. All those things a person dreams about in college when they don't have to pay rent or live within their means, but here and now she is already changing the world. She has actual power. 

Even if right now the only thing she's actively changing is the way women feel about their waist ratio.

*

If you watch Quinn long enough, you start to see what real power looks like. That's in every way, too. Because she makes the call and people jump to make it happen. She finds loopholes within the budget and stretches beyond what ought to be possible to bring in bigger ratings year on year.

But there are limits to that power, even for her. 

There is Chet, for example. 

He can challenge a lot of things, like executive decisions Quinn has already made. 

And Rachel's patience.

* 

When Chet's on set, Rachel spends less time hanging around Quinn's office.

Not that there's a lot of time for being in the office on a normal shoot day anyway, even for Quinn herself. Most of the time, they're all watching the monitors together or talking over walkie. The office is mostly for meetings with outsiders when Quinn needs to impress, or if she's trying to escape from the rest of the world. 

In a few rare instances, it can become the center for crisis management.

"Rachel!" Quinn shouts over walkie, and everybody jolts. "My office. Now."

"Someone is in trouble," Jay sing-songs. He hardly sounds like he means it, but there's an eager look on Shia's face that she can't quite manage to contain. There's a reason she's only an average producer.

*

"Come in, but the shut the door behind you."

There are a lot of smart remarks just on the tip of Rachel's tongue and she realizes she's feeling defensive. It's the wrong move. It makes her seem weak. Like she did something wrong.

She's not even sure what Quinn is pissed about yet.

"Jesus Christ." Quinn stops mid-stride, a sheaf of papers in one hand and a glass of amber liquid in the other. "You look like you've been backed over by a truck."

"Gee, thanks."

She starts to make her eyes comically bug-eyed, but gives up on the effort halfway through. It's hard to bother with Quinn. She doesn't fall for the producing, at least none of the obvious tricks. She doesn't believe the outlandish parts of the exterior. 

It's better to simplify. 

"Sit down." Quinn drops the papers onto the desk and pulls another glass from her not-so-secret drink drawer. "I've been reading transcripts."

It might be that the most time Rachel spends actually resting inside her own skin is when she's face-to-face with Quinn King and decides to drop the act.

Unfortunately, that time isn't now. "How come you don't just get them on your phone?" Because for now she's changing the subject, trying to shift the focus so she can ease into whatever the point of contention is about to be. 

Nobody pulls out transcripts unless there is a problem. Quinn relies on her field producers to sell the stories for her, and it's only if they don't deliver that she starts pulling out the papers. Stacks and stacks of paper.

Half a forest has died for someone's fuck up tonight, and Rachel really hopes it's not hers.

*

It turns out to be that new guy. Rachel doesn't remember his name, and now she'll probably never know it.

He's a freelancer, only here a couple days. 

Quinn's voice is lifting as she tells him to come to her office, now. 

He takes so long to get there, Rachel has to figure he asks someone else where it is. (Attention to detail not exactly a strong suit, apparently.) She'd almost feel bad for the guy if it wasn't so clearly his fault. 

Instead she feels like a voyeur watching an angry couple break up in public. Kind of like the people who watch their show, she's not exactly witness to a violent crime but still taking pleasure in someone else's suffering. 

She's even smiling from behind her fingers when she watches the guy try to squirm away from Quinn's pointed attention. 

Mr. Whats-His-Face is almost in tears when he rushes for the door, but Rachel can't be sure if he cries. Her eyes are only on Quinn's face by that point, waiting to see if she smiles again when her eyes shift over and she looks right into Rachel's. 

Bingo.

"You want to help me clean up this mess, Goldie?"

Rachel's so ready and eager with her answer that she's almost coming off the edge of her chair, leaning forward and dropping her hands far enough now to show off her grin. "How much?"

Quinn's shoulders shift like she's ready to sigh, but instead she smiles. "Two."

"Three." Rachel shakes her head. "And you share the-- Is that Scotch?" 

Quinn's already started to pour. "Bourbon." She starts to hand over the glass -- Rachel half-rising from her seat to get it -- but the hand retracts a bit, pulling the drink several inches back. "Two and a half?"

Rachel sits again. She looks too eager, and she knows it, so she lets herself settle into the seat when she lands, her hands hanging off her knees at limp and lazy angles. "Three, but I'll buy dinner." 

Quinn laughs when she deposits the scotch on the table next to Rachel's nearest knee. "Three." She's smiling when she drinks.

So is Rachel. "I hope you like sushi."

*

There used to be other stories, all the way back in Rachel's childhood. She'd bring a stack of papers to school, thick with medical information (what pills at what times), and the other kids would whisper.

Kids could be little shits, honestly.

There were certain things she had to take at precise times of day, every day since childhood, although the schedule was constantly changing. 

She had figured out early on that Rachel was tonguing her meds because she didn't like the way she would feel after taking them, like a stranger inside her own body. So she would hide the pills under her tongue and pretend to swallow. 

Her mom began to check. She would tug at Rachel's chin and press stiff, wet fingers into her mouth, swiping once. Any pills she found were forced back down again, pressing her fingers firmly to Rachel's throat like she was an unruly dog.

It was easier to skip her meds at school. 

Teachers can't touch you like your own flesh and blood thinks they should be able to.

Sometimes her mom threatened to run blood tests. To check that way. 

"I'm doing this for your own good," she'd say; "I love you."

Somehow it always made Rachel feel sick to her stomach, this idea of love. It felt like being held down underneath a pillow. 

(Sometimes the pills felt like that too, when she actually had to take them.)

If that's all love's really about, she's fine with just fucking.

*

She remembers her first job before college. People there knew. She doesn't know how.

Maybe they met those asshole kids she grew up with. Maybe they guessed.

People would whisper behind her back. Call her crazy. 

That's the catch-all word for when they don't really know what's wrong with you, but something about being close to you makes them feel worse about themselves. Crazy. Mental. Off her meds.

That much was true. 

She was off the meds by that time, finding excuses not to take them. Trying to learn how to act just the right amount of zoned out at home to fool her mother, but that never quite worked.

To this day, Rachel still isn't sure why her home is the only place she can't fake it. 

Whatever that thing is about her that makes other people like her. The person she pretends to be that seems confident and calm, always adapting to every situation.

She can't manage it in front of mother. 

Her mom starts to watch her with that careful look of close inspection, her lips always on the verge of saying something with concern. Pursed and pinched, like her fingers on Rachel's elbow, pulling her back.

She doesn't resist. She relents and lets mom fuss with her hair, pull at her eyelids. Rachel can't help but fidget, feeling wound up. Manic in all the ways that her mother always sees as displaying symptoms.

"We need to change up your dosage," her mother's mouth says gently, but her fingers just squeeze tighter.

*

Those stories disappeared when Rachel went to college out of state. She became a gender studies major and learned all about ableism in her sociology classes. She read about the shame and stigma associated with mental illness.

Taking an academic perspective on her personal experience was useful. It gave Rachel the vocabulary and distance to draw her own conclusions. She now knew how little of what happened to her had been her own fault.

In theory she knew that she should feel fine telling people about her past, the things that might be wrong with her, but she also knew how truth can be used against you. So she kept quiet, and for the first time in her life, the stories were ones of her own inventing. 

It's kind of amazing actually the person you can be when you've got full control of the narrative.

*

It's a little crazy the kind of person you can make other people into with enough control as well.

*

Rachel's first job in the business was almost an accident. She'd tried to apply to participate in a cultural study program in southern California analyzing the impact of the changing cultural climate on women in the workplace.

Something. 

She barely remembers now, because she didn't get in. Not that it would have been enough to pay back the student loans her parents refused to help with. 

Okay, not entirely true. 

Her mom said she'd pay for everything in full if Rachel promised to study somewhere close to home so they could have regular consultations.

Obviously that didn't happen, but she was still pretty proud of Rachel's choice to become a women's studies major. 

Less so when it didn't factor into any aspect of her career.

*

Now she was living at home again, back to tonguing her pills. Somewhere around 19, her mom had started to trust her enough to stop swabbing her mouth as a follow up. Rachel had also spent a lot more time studying, learning to imitate the symptoms of various medication.

She thought she did a pretty convincing job. 

The few times she fucked up, she ended up back on the meds, so that qualified as pretty good incentive. The pills would make it hard to wake up in time for job interviews. Under enough of the wrong medication, she could barely get out of bed. 

Even worse than that were the days when she went completely off again and felt her system suddenly crash. 

She knew she had to get back out from this house again, and fast. She started applying anywhere, for anything. Her first job on a set was an unpaid internship. She lied about her qualifications and then enrolled in a local public college to qualify for course credit. Just so that she had somewhere to go everyday. There was free food and no mom hovering around her in sight. 

It was like heaven just east of Venice Beach.

*

Working under Quinn was a learning experience every day. Not only did she know how to work the girls, work the entire crew, but she also knew when to relent. That was something Rachel still had to work on.

They'll be in Quinn's office, talking over drinks at the end of a long day, and in walks Chet. He stops and considers them both, always looking at Rachel like he's not just surprised to find her there, but also a little slow to even remember that she exists.

He looks at her face and it's like seeing her fully for the first time, every time. 

"You." He points to the door. "Out."

But Rachel lingers, lifting out of the chair slowly.

It's not his office, after all. It's Quinn's. Only she can send her out. 

It's that lack of diplomacy that Rachel still has to work through. The way she stiffens and straightens her shoulders, looking to Quinn first and ignoring Chet completely. It's a contrast with Quinn's slightly lowered stance. She's a different person when Chet's around, more drawn in on herself. Fewer grand gestures or posturing. 

Her entire posture changes, shoulders shifting downward as she lifts her eyes toward Rachel and nods to the door. "You heard him."

Still, Rachel wants to object. They were talking about something. 

They were busy. 

Chet can fuck Quinn any other time he wants -- and he will -- but somehow he has some innate sense for when she and Rachel are letting their guard down enough to relax, to joke, and then suddenly he's there with his perpetual four o'clock shadow and slightly ruffled hair. 

He stinks of scotch and something else, probably the after effects of the cocaine. 

Definitely weed. 

But he smiles a forced, thin smile at her as she passes. "Get home safe." 

For just a brief moment, Quinn almost looks alarmed, and her back is straight again. She is that in between person she sometimes embodies. Half her real and relaxed self and half the person she must be for the show. Like a puppet with its strings pulled too tight, starting to resist. "Rachel." 

Straining against the tension. 

"Mm?" Rachel stops with her hand on the door, fingers nearly grasping at the nob.

"Call an Uber, please; I don't want you driving in that condition."

Chet is actually considering her now, perhaps because he's surprised this conversation is taking so long. Quinn is still standing firm, planted on both legs, with her eyes locked on Rachel instead of him.

It makes it easier for her smile to be natural. To not seem affronted or affected in any way.

"Yeah," she says. "Sure."

*

But she doesn't call for a car. Instead she crashes in one of the unused rooms in the house.

It's close enough to Quinn's office that Rachel feels certain she can hear the desk creaking. A slow but steady rhythm that builds suddenly. 

Rachel listens from the bathroom window, blowing cigarette smoke out into the chill night air until she feels sober enough to fall asleep. 

There are still sounds coming from Quinn's office. 

Maybe someone should tell her to put damping material up.

*

Not that everybody doesn't already know. People talk, even when they're smart enough not to say things to Rachel's face.

She hears the whispers, and she knows people are saying things about Quinn that they'd never even think about Chet. It's a double standard made only worse by the fact that Quinn is a boss who actually acts like one. 

Chet's a buddy. He's everybody on set's pal instead of an employer. 

Plus there's that whole thing where he's a man.

*

There's sexism in the business. Obviously. (Anyone who says otherwise is clearly a guy.)

But Rachel learned a long time ago how to turn people's gendered expectations against them. 

Once in tenth grade she got out of taking her meds because she told one of her (obviously male) teachers that it messed with her menstrual cycle. She was just about to get into the incredibly explicit details when he squirmed and said she would be excused for the week.

So while the feminist in Rachel hates gendered expectations and the way media consumes female bodies -- or how she might be expected to dress to be seen in a certain way -- the rest of her (the part that needs to get paid) knows how to work these things to her advantage. 

Women producers have a distinct advantage in that they have very little pride left. 

You can't have pride and expect to get the shot, let alone sell your own show. Because once it's out there, it's not yours anymore. Whatever part of you got invested in that baby is gone and what's left is a wound or a shell that people get to point at and talk about how fucked up you are. 

Everlasting is Quinn's baby and everybody knows that. It's why she has to care about it, every misshapen twisted inch of it. Every shuffling misstep, that's all on her.

One thing you learn is not to invest in your image. 

A lot of the guys she knows in the business care too much about how they're seen instead of the show itself. You can't care how many people are going to hate you. (The contestants especially are going to hate you by the end of the season.) The most you can do is deliver the best show you can. Really be the best at something. 

So if you have to grovel a little, play the part of the dumb girly girl who doesn't know better, or stroke a guy's ego (along with maybe fondling his arm), that's producing. That's the job. A lot of guys won't do it -- she's heard them balk when forced to beg the electric company over the phone or trying to sweet talk one of the girls determined to bail -- and that's why so many of the best producers are queer or female or black or all of the above. Because when you have to scrape by with no respect at all for so damn long, it doesn't sting so much to give it away.

It didn't belong to you anyway. Just consider it a rental. 

Quinn is amazing, really, when you think about it. It's hard for a woman to get that leg up into the real seat of power. You humble yourself enough times to get the work done and plenty of people won't notice. They'll see the ego at the top, taking all the credit -- again: nobody in the business knows how to share credit -- and they'll skip right over the people actually doing all the work. 

Sure, the people down in the trenches with you will recommend you because they want you there at their side, shouldering more than half of their burden. There always will be work. There's always a job, just never advancement.

You never move forward, caught in a little rat maze of backstabbing and bitter disappointment.

But Quinn is the anomaly. 

Not only does actually share some of the spotlight, but it doesn't even feel like she's trying to produce Rachel when she says that she did well.

When she smiles her sideways smile that creeps onto her face like the smoke twisting from the tip of her cigarette and her voice comes out low, rough from too much alcohol, saying, "I knew you could do it, Goldie." 

She hooks her arm around as if moving in for the very beginnings of a hug, and Rachel feels herself grow tense until the arm merely jostles her in the shoulder. She relaxes slightly, as though even that brief touch has knocked the air right out of her. "Thanks," is all she ca think to say. 

And she means it, somehow. Even on the bad days.

Thanks for giving her a place to go and for noticing when she gets there. Not just work (the physical place), but some kind of greater achievement. 

One day, Rachel has to tell herself, this will all be different. She'll have made it far enough to use this power for good, and when she gets there she needs her skills to be the best they'll be. She needs herself kept sharp, like the edge of a knife.

*

So Rachel uses everything she has at her disposal. She uses the girls and the suitors too, but she often uses herself.

There's a reason she has chosen to dress in a certain way. You can't show up on set looking really presentable and expect people to react the way you want them to. 

This is supposed to be a fairytale. They can't look at you and be allowed to see anything but the waitstaff. If one of these girls is Cinderella, Rachel can't even be her Fairy Godmother. That's too central a role. (That's probably Graham, and god help us all.) If she's anything, she's a coachman. 

Or one of the mice. The fat but well-meaning one who can barely fit inside his shirt.

That's intentional. 

She likes to seem non-threatening. 

The girls open up more if they don't see you as competition for anything. Not jobs or opportunity and certainly not other men. 

At least, that's what some of them want. 

For the others, she has academics to fall back on. Clever little turns of phrase. References to things she's read -- back when she had the time to care about reading. 

You have to adapt to what everyone wants you to be.

Maybe that's why she's always liked Jeremy. He thinks he really sees, you know, but he thinks she's just some nice girl in over her head. He thinks she's his fairytale princess and he's going to sweep in and make her right. 

He thinks he understands a lot, because she got too drunk one night when he was talking about his dog and his brother back home and she mentioned how her parents live fifteen minutes away but she never sees them. She won't see them. 

His face went slack in this beautiful way, like his every part of him was caught up in the effort to look inside her. Like he wanted to see what lies at the very center of Rachel Goldberg. 

He didn't realize he was only looking into a projection, which is what Rachel is best at. 

Sometimes she even fools herself.

*

It had been so simple with Jeremy.

Easy. He was easy.

He made her feel easy in all the ways she wanted to be. Uncomplicated and broken, sure, but in ways that might be beautiful. Fucked up precisely enough that his great big gorgeous hands could put her back together. 

It was like that when they were fucking. Like he was trying to get to some deep part of her. It's so cheesy, right, like a guy could actually heal you with his dick, but sometimes it almost felt that way.

They didn't get to do it very much, not for long at least. But they spent those two days looking in each other's eyes or curled up in his arms, or actually with him inside her. She didn't care how.

He held her against the mattress and the static in her head, the producer directing every moment of even her own life, went silent. She screamed and so did he, and maybe he thought they were thinking the same things. But they weren't. 

Rachel wasn't thinking anything, for the first time in a while. 

It was so nice to be simple.

*

But life isn't simple. Life isn't easy.

Even if he thought it was.

Every voicemail on her machine sounded like an accusation. He was so young. He was so fucking young. 

They're basically the same age, and he's a child.

"Rachel, just pick up the phone," he'd say, like it could be that simple. Like real life has a script and she'd cheated and gone off book. 

It doesn't work that way. You can't just be the same make believe person all day long, even at home, even in bed, and not start to feel a little lost. 

She should know, shouldn't she, it's how she gets some of her best footage. 

Bury the girl inside the skin of whoever you want her to be. When it's time to show off the bodies, drag her back out (screaming) into the sun.

*

The kind of stories they tell about her on set have changed.

*

It had been nice while it lasted. Not to be the crazy girl, the little weirdo, except in the ways she chose to be.

She'd felt happy. She thinks so, at least.

Not that it matters now. Happiness is like some foreign country she's mostly read about in books. Nice to visit, but who can afford the rent? The food even tasted weird.

She's a stale beer and pizza kind of girl.

So she erased Jeremy from her memory, as best as she could. Somehow it's kind of worked. The lines of his face, when she looks at him now, are not the way they are in her head. He's distorted and distant. He doesn't smile at her with his eyes. He barely smiles at all.

It helps.

*

Rachel wakes up feeling restless. Her arms are aching from sleeping cramped up in the equipment truck. She's horny, but only in an abstract way.

She needs some kind of emotional release. Something to let the feelings out that she pretends not to have all day long. 

Not just empathy, which she's almost capable of containing, but the loneliness too. 

The wanting to be wanted.

*

She touches herself thinking of Jeremy, thinking of Adam, thinking of anyone who has paid her the time and attention. (She tries not to think about that. How the want is almost pathological, or how her mom would have some diagnosis on hand.)

When she squints her eyes, she can imagine a face above her. It's nondescript and shifting anyway, moving in time with the rhythm of her wand. She twists her hips and curls her toes, rocking against her heel and bracing a hand against the wall.

She imagines a mouth against her skin, stretching into a smirk or a laugh before pressing into her ear, when the walkie crackles to life. 

"Shit," she breathes, jolting back to the real world. Her hand is almost shaking with unspent energy and it slows her down when pulling on her jeans. "Shit, shit." 

"Rachel," Quinn's voice crackles against her ear, tinged with impatience. "Where the hell are you?"

She slips her hoodie on and checks for any excess aroma from her reasonably dirty t-shirt as she zips up before plugging in her earbud. 

"Goldberg!" 

Rachel could almost wince. The mood is officially killed. "Yeah, go for Rachel." 

She pulls her jeans up, cinching the belt. Composed and put back together again.

Ready for the show.


End file.
